Dover, June 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. Bo Burnham’s comedy special, Inside, is excellent. Clever and funny. A lockdown masterpiece!

2. A great episode of EconTalk with Ian Leslie (the author of Conflicted) on how to disagree better.

3. Word of the day: Gesamtkunstwerk

4. That’s one talented bird!

5. One for musicians and music teachers. I love these examples for explaining the various musical dynamics (piano, forte etc).

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Berlin, April 2015

This week’s Five Things…

1. I absolutely loved this episode of Tape Notes with Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis which delves into the writing and recording process for Foals’ album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost

2. This Greenpeace advert is very clever. Hits the mark!

3. I discover so much great music through NPR’s Tiny Desk. Butcher Brown is my latest find.

4. Wintergatan, the makers of the amazing Marble Machine are building another music making machine, currently called Marble Machine X. They are documenting the building process on YouTube.

5. I’ve rediscovered my love for Really Bad Chess. If you’re bad at chess but like the idea of chess this might be the game for you.

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ps. I’m taking a week off next week but usual service will resume the following week. 

Helmingham, April 2016

This week’s Five Things…

1. I’ve updated my Now page.

2. Maxïmo Park discuss the making of their latest album Nature Always Wins on the (Sodajerker On Songwriting) podcast.

3. And another music podcast recommendation! Adam Buxton talks about his creative process and his jingles on the Tape Notes podcast.

4. Ted Gioia explains how to listen to old music and hear it the way it first sounded to those alive at the time.

5. A beautiful collection of digitally restored photos of Earth.

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Holywells Park, Ipswich - May 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. 👏 “Paint Drying is a 2016 British feature film directed and produced by Charlie Lyne. The film is about paint on a wall drying, lasting for ten hours and seven minutes. The film was created by Charlie Lyne in order to force the British Board of Film Classification to watch all ten hours to give the film an age rating classification, as a protest against censorship and the prohibitive cost to independent film-makers”

2. In celebration of The Guardian’s 200th birthday they’ve released an annotated version of their very first issue. Very cool!

3. This is great. Andre Agassi explains the trick he used to predict where Boris Becker would serve.

4. A very interesting episode of Rafael Behr’s podcast, Politics on the Couch. “Rafael Behr talks to the cognitive scientist and radicalisation expert Nafees Hamid about what makes extremists tick and how to change their minds.”

5. This is a fun little website. Scroll and click… and see what happens!

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Holywells Park, Ipswich - May 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. “That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult — if you don’t lose it.” From this excellent list of (unsolicited) advice from Kevin Kelly

2. The healing grid illusion. Clever!

3. An amazing collection of long exposure photos of fireflies.

4. A fascinating long read about Nintendo’s game director, Shigeru Miyamoto.

5. “$7 (£5) pays for one vaccination in a developing country. Each vaccine is worth $5800 (£4000) in economic and non-economic value to the world, and may well save a life.” More info in the tweet here. You can donate here.

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Valletta, July 2019

This week’s Five Things…

1. A juggling, rhythmic masterclass. Michael Moschen performs The Triangle

2. John McWhorter explains the origins of a number of “rude” English words. You probably don’t want to listen to this around any kids!

3. Rob Reid explores the steps that can be taken to help prevent the next pandemic. It’s a long podcast at 3 hours 41 minutes but I found the whole thing fascinating.

4. I just finished Ian Leslie’s excellent book Conflicted on how to have better and more productive disagreements. If everyone read this book we’d live in a far happier world!

5. Will I ever get tired of re-watching Community? I’m not sure I will!

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